Antares Harmony Engine user manual

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Chapter 2: Introducing Harmony Engine
What’s It Got?
With four independent harmony voices, 
a variety of powerful harmony generating 
modes, humanization features for natural 
sounding performances, and a flexible real-time 
preset system for harmony and vocal type, 
Harmony Engine provides incredibly easy-to -
use tools to quickly and easily produce virtually 
any vocal arrangement you can imagine.
Key Harmony Engine Features Include:
•	 Four	high-quality, 	formant-corrected	
harmony voices with...

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•	 Humanize	functions	that	provide	selectable	
amounts of variation to each harmony 
voice for realistic, natural sounding results
•	 A 	Freeze 	function 	that 	allows 	a 	unique	
variety of backup vocal effects by 
letting you instantly freeze pitch 
and/or formant articulation
•	 A	Harmony	Preset	matrix	that	lets	you 	
create up to 15 complete harmony 
settings and instantaneously recall 
them, in real time or via automation
•	 A 	Voice 	Parameter 	Preset 	matrix 	that	
lets you create and instantly...

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Chapter 3: Harmony Engine Controls
This chapter is a reference for all of the controls used in the Harmony Engine interface. and move the cursor to the right to turn the 
knob clockwise or to the left to turn the knob 
counterclockwise. The current value of the 
knob’s parameter appears in its associated 
numeric display.
For faders, simply click on the “thumb” of the 
fader and move it to the desired setting.
Option (Mac)/Control (PC)- clicking a knob or 
fader returns it to its default value. 
NOTE :...

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Routing
Harmony Engine should typically be 
instantiated as an insert effect on the track that 
will supply the source audio. Harmony Engine 
can be instantiated on a mono or stereo track, 
but since it processes only a single channel of 
audio, if you instantiate it on a stereo track, the 
two channels will be mixed together before 
being processed.
Harmony Engine’s output can be mono 
or stereo (or, in some circumstances, five 
channels — see below). Unless you have 
some overriding reason for using...

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(e.g., de-essing, noise reduction, etc.) should 
be applied to the audio before it is input to 
Harmony Engine.
NOTE : If you will using both de-essing 
and compression on your vocal track, 
it has been our experience that using 
the de-esser before the compressor provides 
improved results in Harmony Engine. 
As mentioned above, effects like chorus or 
reverb can negatively affect Harmony Engine’s 
ability to reliably detect the pitch of the input 
audio. As a result, you should not apply these...

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Bypass
This control is used to (you 
guessed it) bypass the plug-
in. It has been designed to 
provide artifact-free bypass 
switching so that you can use 
it to seamlessly enable harmony only where 
desired on a track.
Click the Bypass button to toggle its state. 
When it’s red, all harmony voices are muted 
and the original input will be passed to all 
output channels. This happens seamlessly (i.e., 
with no click or artifact on activation). 
N OTE : When Bypass is enabled, 
the original input will...

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Mute
Engaging Mute mode causes the 
original input signal to be muted from 
the output. 
When the Mute button is blue, Mute 
mode in engaged. Click the button to toggle 
its state.
N OTE : If both the Input Channel’s 
Solo and Mute buttons are pressed, 
Solo takes precedence. However, if 
Solo is then disengaged, the original input will 
then be muted.
aNOT hEr N OTE : Moving a channel’s 
Gain slider to its minimum setting 
also results in completely muting its 
output.
Pan
Sets the 
original input’s...

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Harmony Voices 1-4
Each of the four Harmony Voice channels 
are functionally identical and contain identical 
controls. 
It may be useful to think of the four Harmony 
Voices as being similar to the voices of a four-
voice synthesizer. Each voice has independent 
controls for setting its timbre, vibrato, pan 
and level. The method by which pitches are 
assigned to voices varies with the Harmony 
modes selected in the Harmony Control 
section. In this section, we’ll describe the 
Harmony Voice...

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Solo
Engaging a channel’s Solo mode 
causes that channel’s signal 
to appear at the output and 
simultaneously mutes any other 
channels (Harmony Voice and/or Input Voice) 
that are not also soloed. 
When a channel’s Solo button is yellow, Solo 
mode in engaged on that channel. Click a 
button to toggle its state.
N OTE : If both a channel’s Solo and 
Mute buttons are pressed, Solo takes 
precedence.
Mute
Engaging a Harmony Voice channel’s 
Mute mode causes that channel’s 
signal to be muted from the...

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Interval
The Interval popup 
sets a Harmony Voice’s 
pitch interval relative 
to the original input 
in Fixed Interval and 
Smart Interval modes. 
In both modes, the range is plus-or-minus two 
octaves. In Fixed Interval mode, the popup 
displays half-steps in the range -24 to +24. In 
Smart Interval mode, the popup displays scale 
degrees in the range 16va to 16vb. 
This control is inactive in all Chord Name and 
MIDI modes.
N OTE : Harmony Engine remembers 
the most recent Interval settings for...